How To Focus Your Resume

Are you hoping to land a job in 2012? If so, your chances of that happening will increase significantly if you focus your resume.

To focus you resume, use the job description to edit your resume's content. In doing so, you will be able to provide your prospective employer with a resume that he or she wants to see. Recruiters, employers, and hiring managers receive large quantities of resumes each day; therefore, your resume needs to make an impact in the short amount of time that it will be viewed.

Once you've edited each section of your resume accurately and honestly to fit the job description, do one final sweep to make sure that your resume is:

Customized

You need to be sure that each section of your resume is specifically tailored to each job that you apply for. According to Martin Yate in "How To Make Room For Supporting Skills On Your Resume" on Simply Hired Blog, you need to provide more than just focused content. Employers "want to know about your supporting skills".

Listing skills that are pertinent now is great, but it might be helpful to know that you have other skills that could be utilized down the road. For example, the position that you apply for might require that you are fluent in French. If you are fluent in French and Spanish, you should list both. This might give you an edge, because you never know what kind of developments that company has in the works.

Clear and Original

If your resume includes a lot of vague and generic content, your application will surely be cast aside. Providing a lot of vague descriptions, like "self-motivator", doesn't tell your employer anything. You will experience greater success if you describe exactly how you made an impact at that company with hard numbers whenever possible.

Easy to Read

Before hitting "Send", make sure that rushed employers can easily scan your resume. This might mean that you need to change your format, add bullet points or place key words in bold. They don't have much time to look at your resume, so make sure they can easily grasp what's important.

If you find it difficult to focus your resume on your own, or are finding yourself stuck, you can use Resunate. Resunate will automatically evaluate your resume and Auto Focus it for every job that you apply.

How do you ensure your resume is properly tailored for each job opportunity?

Mona Abdel-Halim is the co-founder of Resunate.com, the world's only search engine optimizing resume builder. You can find Mona and Resunate on Facebook and Twitter.